“The bracelet,” said Skerry suddenly. “It is the kind of gift that the dwarves bestow on their dead. If only I had remembered that before!”
“If only I had recognized what she was doing all evening long,” said Ruan. “I see now that she was purifying herself, preparing herself for the ordeal ahead.”
“And you are very certain that she means to make this sacrifice?” asked Kivik.
Ruan’s hands curled into fists on the reins. “The spell is all but forbidden. Until tonight I never thought she would do this thing, but now I am convinced of it. Her plan, as I take it, is simple enough: to challenge Camhóinhann and the rest openly, suddenly, recklessly. She believes they will strike her down in the same fashion. They don’t know her, they don’t know who she is—how could they know when she hardly knew herself half a year ago? They will see a young, inexperienced wizard, overconfident, throwing down a challenge. And if she were truly no more than that, they could slay her with magic and take little or no harm from it.” He hesitated. “I have, as she has repeatedly told me, no shadow of a right to prevent her from doing anything she chooses to do, however my own heart might urge against it. But my greatest fear…”
When he did not continue, Skerry prompted him. “Your greatest fear?”
“My greatest fear is that she will do this and Camhóinhann will not be provoked into any ill-considered action. That he will take her prisoner and kill her some other way. In which case she will be just as surely lost to us—but she will gain nothing of what she hopes to accomplish by sacrificing herself.”
30
The dark hour before dawn found Sindérian on the outskirts of the ruined city. Her pulse was throbbing like a drum; her heart seemed to have expanded until it filled the entire cavity of her chest. Dismounting and sending the mare away, she began to beat her own path through the brush and tangled growth.
Finally, she came to what must have once been the main road cutting across Ceir Eldig: a broad cobblestone pavement, much disturbed in places where the earth had cracked or folded back on itself and a rank growth of grass and weeds had grown up in the gaps between the stones. It made for slow and treacherous going, but always ahead of her, awash in moonlight, she could see her goal, the great eminence on which the wreckage of the Emperor’s palace stood, rising above the chaos of tumbled stone and mounded earth.
It took longer than she had thought it would to reach the base of the hill and begin to climb. By that time the moon had dropped below the horizon and the only light came from the shoals of silver stars swimming far to the south. She knew the Furiádhin would not break camp before sunrise, but she had hoped for a chance to rest and to gather her courage before it came time to act. Unfortunately, the side of the hill was so steep and overgrown—and whatever road led to the top had so thoroughly disappeared—it seemed to be hours before she finally struggled to the summit. There the devastation was just as great: shattered buildings, cracked pavements, a park full of trees grown wild, massive blocks of stone half buried in the ground, piles of dirt and rock where the earth had geysered up. And one lone roofless tower, broken at the midpoint.
She climbed a fragmentary staircase that wound around the tower. It ended abruptly, at the brink of a long drop. From that vantage point, Sindérian had an unimpeded view into the city below—and the camp of Ouriána’s priests, just where she had known she would find them, in the garden of a ruined mansion.
They had built fires at either end of their camp, so it was possible to make out their shadowy tents, the picket line of their horses, the two armored guards standing watch. But now a faint flush in the eastern sky heralded the dawn. Time was running out. My own time is running out.
Her mouth was dry after the long climb, her limbs shaking, yet she found she was eager for the contest ahead. All the years of her life had merely been leading up to this one night. For what else had she been born, to what other end had she been trained? Not for the endless, futile struggle on the battlefields of Rheithûn, not to wear out her heart and her talents with the endless grind of years—oh, surely not that.
Daughter of a long line of wizards, she would go out instead in a white-hot blaze, like a dying star.
She began to prepare herself for what she knew would be her greatest—and last—spell-casting.
The king—for there had been no emperors in those days—who first instructed his architects to erect a palace for him at Ceir Eldig had chosen this eminence for a reason: it was the place where no fewer than four different ley lines met and crossed. Using the power generated by those lines, that king, his wizards, and generations of his descendants had driven back the Dark for a long age and built an empire so mighty they had believed it would endure to the end of the world. No one had tapped that power for generations, but the force that pulsed along the lines was still there, in no way diminished.
So now, one hand gripping the other, she bent her head, concentrating all her will and desire on one object: calling the power of the lines to her. Sweat broke out on her forehead; she felt mind and body straining with the strength of her intention. For a terrible moment she thought the task was too great, that she was too weak—Then the power answered and surged up to meet her.
In the beginning there was agony, such agony as she had never imagined. It pierced her like thorns, it burned in her veins like molten metal, it singed her like fire. It was too much to bear, yet she endured it. It devoured her, yet she was not consumed by it. And gradually, the unbearable became bearable; the first raw bolts of energy were replaced by a half-pleasurable warmth. Like the salamander, she was learning to live within the fire, as though it were her native element.
And still the power poured into her, still she soaked it up, until her skin tingled and glowed with it and her hair crackled and gave off sparks. Stars danced at her fingertips; fascinated, she drew constellations on the air. She felt that she might level mountains, stem the flow of mighty rivers, turn planets in their courses.
Almost she forgot her purpose in the fierce joy of it—until some movement down in the ruins, a shout as someone caught sight of her incandescent figure, recalled her and sobered her.
So she turned her mind to shaping the power to her own ends. As it fed her, so she fed it with her own fierce will. Spells whirled in her brain; patterns formed, a complex web of mental forces strong enough to catch lightning. Then she gathered as much energy as she could hold in one hand, molded it into a javelin of fire, and hurled it into the camp below.
In response to the guard’s warning, Camhóinhann and Dyonas emerged from their tents just in time to see Sindérian’s javelin streak through the air, then explode in a rain of sparks as it hit the ground. By the time Goezenou had joined them, another missile had landed in their midst, and then another. In the chaos of men and horses that erupted in the camp, the three priests were unable to do more than shield themselves and scramble for cover behind sections of broken masonry.
Goezenou and Dyonas met behind a low, fragmentary wall. Scanning the hilltop, from which the barrage seemed to originate, it did not take long to locate a glowing female form, etched against a brightening dawn sky.
“What fool is that who challenges us?” hissed Goezenou.
Though it was not possible from this distance to see her face, Dyonas’s memory was long. “At a guess, it is the girl Thaga was supposed to dispose of at Saer.” As he spoke, he sent a spell to divert one of her more accurate casts.
“And she has followed us all this way? So much the worse for her! A mere fledgling, with no name or reputation.”
Dyonas gave him a contemptuous glance. “Do you claim to know all the wizards on Leal, their names and abilities? Whoever she is, she appears to be no mere dabbler.”
“She is calling up power from the leys,” Goezenou said with a sneer. “Otherwise—” A tree burst into flames behind them, and they broke in opposite directions.
Moments later, Dyonas met Camhóinhann behind an overgrown pile of stones. “The Princess?” said the younger priest.
“I have shielded her,” answered Camhóinhann. “Naturally, that was my first thought.”
A bolt of energy went sizzling past, only inches from Dyonas’s head. “Whoever she is, she must feel she has some chance of defeating us—or else she has been sent to distract us while others approach us from behind.”
“More likely,” said Camhóinhann, “she is one who has just enough inherent power to think she can win by losing. Have a care,” he added as the other hurled an answering bolt in the girl’s direction, narrowly missing her. “If you had hit her…!”
“I am not quite a fool. I understand that much.” There was a loud crash when a wall fell, followed by a curse as Goezenou crashed through some bushes to the left and joined them behind their rampart of stone. “While we draw her fire, what will you do?” Dyonas asked Camhóinhann.
“I will weave a net of spells to hold her,” said the High Priest. “Once we have her fast, we can decide what to do with her.”